Error rate detection due to primary user emulation attack in cognitive radio networks

Security threat is a crucial issue in cognitive radio network (CRN). These threats come from physical layer, data link layer, network layer, transport layer, and application layer. Hence, security system to all layers in CRN has a responsibility to protect the communication between among Secondary User (SU) or to maintain valid detection to the presence of Primary User (PU) signals. Primary User Emulation Attack (PUEA) is a threat on physical layer where malicious user emulates PU signal. This paper studies the effect of exclusive region of PUEA in CRN. We take two setting of exclusive distances, 30m and 50m, where this radius of area is free of malicious users. Probability of false alarm (Pf) and miss detection (Pm) are used to evaluate the performances. The result shows that increasing distance of exclusive region may decrease Pf and Pm

Enable Reliable and Secure Data Transmission in Resource-Constrained Emerging Networks

The increasing deployment of wireless devices has connected humans and objects all around the world, benefiting our daily life and the entire society in many aspects. Achieving those connectivity motivates the emergence of different types of paradigms, such as cellular networks, large-scale Internet of Things (IoT), cognitive networks, etc. Among these networks, enabling reliable and secure data transmission requires various resources including spectrum, energy, and computational capability. However, these resources are usually limited in many scenarios, especially when the number of devices is considerably large, bringing catastrophic consequences to data transmission. For example, given the fact that most of IoT devices have limited computational abilities and inadequate security protocols, data transmission is vulnerable to various attacks such as eavesdropping and replay attacks, for which traditional security approaches are unable to address. On the other hand, in the cellular network, the ever-increasing data traffic has exacerbated the depletion of spectrum along with the energy consumption. As a result, mobile users experience significant congestion and delays when they request data from the cellular service provider, especially in many crowded areas. In this dissertation, we target on reliable and secure data transmission in resource-constrained emerging networks. The first two works investigate new security challenges in the current heterogeneous IoT environment, and then provide certain countermeasures for reliable data communication. To be specific, we identify a new physical-layer attack, the signal emulation attack, in the heterogeneous environment, such as smart home IoT. To defend against the attack, we propose two defense strategies with the help of a commonly found wireless device. In addition, to enable secure data transmission in large-scale IoT network, e.g., the industrial IoT, we apply the amply-and-forward cooperative communication to increase the secrecy capacity by incentivizing relay IoT devices. Besides security concerns in IoT network, we seek data traffic alleviation approaches to achieve reliable and energy-efficient data transmission for a group of users in the cellular network. The concept of mobile participation is introduced to assist data offloading from the base station to users in the group by leveraging the mobility of users and the social features among a group of users. Following with that, we deploy device-to-device data offloading within the group to achieve the energy efficiency at the user side while adapting to their increasing traffic demands. In the end, we consider a perpendicular topic - dynamic spectrum access (DSA) - to alleviate the spectrum scarcity issue in cognitive radio network, where the spectrum resource is limited to users. Specifically, we focus on the security concerns and further propose two physical-layer schemes to prevent spectrum misuse in DSA in both additive white Gaussian noise and fading environments

Security-aware Cooperation in Dynamic Spectrum Access

We have witnessed a massive growth in wireless data, which almost doubles every year. The wireless data is expected to skyrocket further in the future due to the proliferation of devices and the emerging data-hungry applications. To accommodate the explosive growth in mobile traffic, a large amount of wireless spectrum is needed. With the limited spectrum resource, the current static spectrum allocation policy cannot serve well for future wireless systems. Moreover, it exacerbates the spectrum scarcity by resulting in severe spectrum underutilization. As a promising solution, dynamic spectrum access (DSA) is envisaged to increase spectrum efficiency by dynamic sharing all the spectrum. DSA can be enabled by cognitive radio technologies, which allow the unlicensed users (the secondary users, i.e., SUs) to dynamically access the unused spectrum (i.e., spectrum holes) owned by the licensed users (the primary users i.e., PUs). In order to identify the unused spectrum (spectrum holes), unlicensed users need to conduct spectrum sensing. While spectrum sensing might be inaccurate due to multipath fading and shadowing. To address this problem, user cooperation can be leveraged, with two main forms: cooperative spectrum sensing and cooperative cognitive radio networking (CCRN). For the former, SUs cooperate with each other in spectrum sensing to better detect the spectrum holes. For the latter, SUs cooperate with the PUs to gain access opportunities from the PUs by improving the transmission performance of the PUs. Whereas cooperation can also incur security issues, e.g., malicious users might participate into cooperation, corrupting or disrupting the communication of legitimate users, selfish users might refuse to contribute to cooperation for self-interests, etc. Those security issues are of great importance and need to be considered for cooperation in DSA. In this thesis, we study security-aware cooperation in DSA. First, we investigate cooperative spectrum sensing in multi-channel scenario such that a user can be scheduled for spectrum sensing and spectrum sharing. The cooperative framework can achieve a higher average throughput per user, which provides the incentive for selfish users to participate in cooperative spectrum sensing. Second, secure communication in CCRN is studied, where the SUs cooperate with the PU to enhance the latter’s communication security and then gain transmission opportunities. Partner selection, spectrum access time allocation, and power allocation are investigated. Third, we study risk aware cooperation based DSA for the multiple channel scenario, where multiple SUs cooperate with multiple PUs for spectrum access opportunities, considering the trustworthiness of SUs. Lastly, we propose an incentive mechanism to stimulate SUs to cooperate with PUs when they have no traffic. The cooperating SUs are motivated to cooperate with PUs to enhance the security of the PUs by accumulating credits and then consume the earned credits for spectrum trading when they have traffic in the future

Modelling, Dimensioning and Optimization of 5G Communication Networks, Resources and Services

This reprint aims to collect state-of-the-art research contributions that address challenges in the emerging 5G networks design, dimensioning and optimization. Designing, dimensioning and optimization of communication networks resources and services have been an inseparable part of telecom network development. The latter must convey a large volume of traffic, providing service to traffic streams with highly differentiated requirements in terms of bit-rate and service time, required quality of service and quality of experience parameters. Such a communication infrastructure presents many important challenges, such as the study of necessary multi-layer cooperation, new protocols, performance evaluation of different network parts, low layer network design, network management and security issues, and new technologies in general, which will be discussed in this book

Optimal Cooperative Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radio

The rapid increasing interest in wireless communication has led to the continuous development of wireless devices and technologies. The modern convergence and interoperability of wireless technologies has further increased the amount of services that can be provided, leading to the substantial demand for access to the radio frequency spectrum in an efficient manner. Cognitive radio (CR) an innovative concept of reusing licensed spectrum in an opportunistic manner promises to overcome the evident spectrum underutilization caused by the inflexible spectrum allocation. Spectrum sensing in an unswerving and proficient manner is essential to CR. Cooperation amongst spectrum sensing devices are vital when CR systems are experiencing deep shadowing and in a fading environment. In this thesis, cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) schemes have been designed to optimize detection performance in an efficient and implementable manner taking into consideration: diversity performance, detection accuracy, low complexity, and reporting channel bandwidth reduction. The thesis first investigates state of the art spectrums sensing algorithms in CR. Comparative analysis and simulation results highlights the different pros, cons and performance criteria of a practical CSS scheme leading to the problem formulation of the thesis. Motivated by the problem of diversity performance in a CR network, the thesis then focuses on designing a novel relay based CSS architecture for CR. A major cooperative transmission protocol with low complexity and overhead - Amplify and Forward (AF) cooperative protocol and an improved double energy detection scheme in a single relay and multiple cognitive relay networks are designed. Simulation results demonstrated that the developed algorithm is capable of reducing the error of missed detection and improving detection probability of a primary user (PU). To improve spectrum sensing reliability while increasing agility, a CSS scheme based on evidence theory is next considered in this thesis. This focuses on a data fusion combination rule. The combination of conflicting evidences from secondary users (SUs) with the classical Dempster Shafter (DS) theory rule may produce counter-intuitive results when combining SUs sensing data leading to poor CSS performance. In order to overcome and minimise the effect of the counter-intuitive results, and to enhance performance of the CSS system, a novel state of the art evidence based decision fusion scheme is developed. The proposed approach is based on the credibility of evidence and a dissociability degree measure of the SUs sensing data evidence. Simulation results illustrate the proposed scheme improves detection performance and reduces error probability when compared to other related evidence based schemes under robust practcial scenarios. Finally, motivated by the need for a low complexity and minmum bandwidth reporting channels which can be significant in high data rate applications, novel CSS quantization schemes are proposed. Quantization methods are considered for a maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) and an evidence based CSS scheme. For the MLE based CSS, a novel uniform and optimal output entropy quantization scheme is proposed to provide fewer overhead complexities and improved throughput. While for the Evidence based CSS scheme, a scheme that quantizes the basic probability Assignment (BPA) data at each SU before being sent to the FC is designed. The proposed scheme takes into consideration the characteristics of the hypothesis distribution under diverse signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the PU signal based on the optimal output entropy. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed quantization CSS scheme improves sensing performance with minimum number of quantized bits when compared to other related approaches

Optimal decision making in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive Radio Networks are being researched upon heavily in the various layers of the communication structure. The task of bringing software in the physical layer of communication system led to the concept of a smart radio being able to learn, adapt and make intelligent decisions in an autonomous manner by use of a Software Defined Radio. This work provides novel concepts in the areas of spectrum sensing, learning of ongoing transmissions through Reinforcment learning, use of a game theoretic concept such as Zero-sum game for resilience of authorized users in cases of jamming, and decision making of user transmissions through Markov Decision processes. This is highly applicable in dynamic radio environments such as emergency communications required during natural disasters, large scale events and in mobile wireless communications. Such applications come under the "Internet of Things"

Internet of Things and Sensors Networks in 5G Wireless Communications

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue Internet of Things and Sensors Networks in 5G Wireless Communications that was published in Sensors

Internet of Things and Sensors Networks in 5G Wireless Communications

The Internet of Things (IoT) has attracted much attention from society, industry and academia as a promising technology that can enhance day to day activities, and the creation of new business models, products and services, and serve as a broad source of research topics and ideas. A future digital society is envisioned, composed of numerous wireless connected sensors and devices. Driven by huge demand, the massive IoT (mIoT) or massive machine type communication (mMTC) has been identified as one of the three main communication scenarios for 5G. In addition to connectivity, computing and storage and data management are also long-standing issues for low-cost devices and sensors. The book is a collection of outstanding technical research and industrial papers covering new research results, with a wide range of features within the 5G-and-beyond framework. It provides a range of discussions of the major research challenges and achievements within this topic